You need opportunities to work the randomness into something resembling a paced setlist, and he delivers some of that by including a number of nonspecific items in the options.
The first of those are a number of Bonus items, like the Time bonus, where all he's committed to is the vague idea that the songs have Time in the title, or possibly have some reference to its passage. A Time bonus might, therefore, feature Man Out of Time, which is on the wheel anyway, American Gangster Time which wasn't, Time is on My Side or The Last Time, or, conceivably, The Long Honeymoon.
Then there are a number of album versus album options, like King's Ransom, which will deliver two songs, one from each album, with the choice made on stage by your host, presumably based on a mixture of where the set list needs to go, what they've got ready to roll and what Elvis actually feels like playing. Finally there's the Hammer of Song, a variation of the old fairground test of strength, with the successful dinger getting their choice played (assuming it's on the wheel).
The opening and closing sections of the show, predictably, don't feature the Wheel at all, and deliver the possibility of throwing in any of the usual suspects that haven't had an airing to wind things up and send the customers away satisfied.
So, all in all, the whole package delivers the possibility of a thoroughly enjoyable evening's entertainment, assuming everything runs to plan, and if it doesn't there are avenues there to allow them to be manipulated into something that's going to work better.After a low key opening set by Joe Camilleri and friends George Butrumlis and (I'm guessing here, Joe didn't introduce the other guitarist) Tony Faehse that wasn't likely to divert attention from the headliner.
Elvis and the Imposters delivered a one-two-three-four salvo of I Hope You're Happy Now, Heart of the City, Mystery Dance and Radio Radio that was almost guaranteed to get things off to a rocking start and satisfy the not too many obscurities crowd. With the preliminaries (the Overture, according to the EC website, with terpsichorean styles of Ms. Kelly Kay Kelly) out of the way Costello (quite literally) changed hats, morphing into Napoleon Dynamite, ringmaster and entertainer extraordinaire.